Plum Puddin' wrote: The US-NATO intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular and by so doing to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity and trying to restore the status quo ante.

This actually makes no sense.

I think he's trying to say that it is no longer a rebellion of the people now the west is involved. How likely is it the CIA and NATO wont put in their selected leaders in place of Mo?

By some reports 2/3's of the country support him. That could be wrong but I don't think 'our' news is showing the full picture either.

Used correctly, one fire can stop another.

Something smells.

Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:57 pm

Windom

Joined: 04 May 2007
Posts: 721
Location: Manchester, UK.

crash wrote: What's the big deal with that Wikileaks quote? So the US wished that Libya was more open to international oil companies… big surprise there.

NATO intervened in the Balkans without any motive for oil, didn’t they? So I don’t buy that simply because Libya has oil, any intervention must be nothing more than a resource grab. The NTC has promised to respect all previous contracts. If this was some sort of Western conspiracy, wouldn’t the new government cancel its contracts with Russia and China to the benefit of Total, BP, ENI, et. al.? But that’s not what they’re doing. The NTC has indicated that in future deals it would look favorably upon the powers that backed the rebellion, but how is that a surprise? Russia abstained from the vote authorizing intervention. China was found discussing weapon sales with Gaddafi DURING the war. Of course the new government isn’t going to go to them first when it wants to open a new well.

I don’t get it, I didn’t post the quotes to surprise anyone. From where I see it too, NATO didn’t intervene in the Balkans for oil. They certainly didn’t do it to protect people or in defence of human rights – the myth of humanitarian intervention. Obviously the Libyan aggression is complex and can’t be boiled down to just one set of reasons; I do think that strategic interests and resources however do play a role in any type of military intervention. Who said this was a Western conspiracy? Are you talking to me here, anyway? I don’t know, haha. The rest of this paragraph you seem to be talking to yourself – you talk about Russia abstaining from the vote in exchange for existing oil contracts to be respected and then that the new government will look to Western powers in future oil deals – but this Western aggression has nothing to do with oil, no sir, nada.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8736496/Libya-the-minister-the-Tory-donor-and-a-contract-to-supply-oil.html

Quote:
The deal with Vitol was said to have been masterminded by Alan Duncan, the former oil trader turned junior minister, who has close business links to the oil firm and was previously a director of one of its subsidiaries.
Mr Duncan’s private office received funding from the head of Vitol before the general election. Ian Taylor, the company’s chief executive and a friend of Mr Duncan, has given more than £200,000 to the Conservatives.
Vitol is thought to be the only oil firm to have traded with the rebels during the Libyan conflict. Oil industry sources said that other firms including BP, Shell and Glencore had not been approached over the deal. One well-placed source said this was “very surprising” because other companies would have been keen to be involved.
Last night the Coalition was under pressure to disclose details of Mr Duncan’s role in securing the deal, worth about $1billion (£618million). The firm is thought to have supplied fuel and associated products to the rebels and traded oil on their behalf.

Quote: I think that like the Balkans, regional stability was the main reason for intervention. If anything, the possibility of new contracts just sweetened the deal. If you look at how the US has played it’s cards over the last 9 months, stability was the name of the game. Look at Syria for instance. Ally of Iran, backer of Hezbollah, seat of Hamas, and still technically at war with Israel – yet as late as May Clinton was refraining from insisting that Bashar step down – because the enemy you know is better, etc.

Before February we were getting along just fine with Gaddafi. Everything was stable: oil was flowing and refugees weren't streaming into Europe. The CIA was working with him to combat al-Qaida (and Libyan dissidents). In fact, one of the rebel commanders, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, who was a member of the LIFG (which tried to assassinate Gaddafi numerous times), was tortured by the CIA and then turned over to the Libyan government.

After things started to go bad for Gaddafi, I think France and the UK saw an opportunity to get involved in a (relatively) easy fight on the side of the “good” guys and at the same time assist in stabilizing the country (the idea being that a Libya ruled by a weakened and vengeful Gaddafi would be less stable than a post-revolutionary Libya without him). After initially cautioning against an intervention (remember Gates’ warnings of the difficulty of a no fly zone?) the administration eventually hopped on board. They didn't look so great after the Mubarak fiasco - here was a way be on the right side of history! So we starting dropping the bombs. Even though we did most of the dirty work, we let Sarkozy and Cameron stay as the “face” of the intervention. Leading from behind and all that.

Yes, the NATO went way beyond the UN mandate. Yes, Congress should have been consulted before we attacked.

We could have done things better. But did we do the right thing? I don’t doubt it at all.

Anyway, I have to disagree on the whole regional stability model. Like the U.S. and the other cohorts give two shits about regional stability in the Congo for instance. Or even in the Middle East, say in Yemen when crimes and mass murder committed by government forces against unarmed protestors greatly exceeded any Gaddafi action at similar junctures, or in Bahrain. During the lead-up to our aggression you kept hearing about Gaddafi’s regime committed mass rapes, using foreign mercenaries and employing helicopters against civilians though later Amnesty and HRW found no evidence for these crimes. Stable for who exactly, leaders, elites and politicians right? Where’s the stability for those living in nations supplied by U.S. arms, you tend to not hear as much in the press about U.S. arms being used to suppress the revolt by the Houthi Shiite population in the north of Yemen and the southern secessionist movement that has been trying to overthrow his government for a number of years.

‘Seventy per cent of the capital’s homes have no running water… Large parts of the city have little or no electricity. Fresh produce, milk and cooking gas are all but unattainable...

‘Hospitals are running out of oxygen, fixators for treating fractures, and drugs for conditions such as diabetes… The city is filled with the stench of rubbish, and occasional corpses, rotting in the heat. Telephones work only intermittently. Most commercial life ceased months ago. Many people have no money left because the banks are shut and salaries have not been paid.’

Quote:
If stopping the killing had been the real aim, Nato states would have backed a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement, rather than repeatedly vetoing both. Instead, after having lost serious strategic ground in the Arab revolutions, the Libyan war offered the US, Britain and France a chance to put themselves at the heart of the process while bringing to heel an unreliable state with the largest oil reserves in Africa.

Fri Sep 09, 2011 4:24 am

firefly

Joined: 27 Sep 2002
Posts: 3990
Location: Montreal

Plum Puddin' wrote:

MCGF wrote:

Plum Puddin' wrote: The US-NATO intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular and by so doing to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity and trying to restore the status quo ante.

This actually makes no sense.

I think he's trying to say that it is no longer a rebellion of the people now the west is involved. How likely is it the CIA and NATO wont put in their selected leaders in place of Mo?

I think it's more along the lines of there never really was a real rebellion to begin with, that is the CIA was behind the whole thing.

Quote: By some reports 2/3's of the country support him. That could be wrong but I don't think 'our' news is showing the full picture either.

Totally. Have you seen this video:

Crash - The last estimate that I heard about Iraq was one million. Plus you gotta factor in the US's support of Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war. The US wanted those people dead. Look at Kissinger's quote:

"it's a pity they [Iran and Iraq] both can't lose."

Fri Sep 09, 2011 9:03 am

crash

Joined: 07 Aug 2003
Posts: 5457
Location: the chocolate city with a marshmallow center and a graham cracker crust of corruption

Windom wrote: I don’t get it, I didn’t post the quotes to surprise anyone. From where I see it too, NATO didn’t intervene in the Balkans for oil. They certainly didn’t do it to protect people or in defence of human rights – the myth of humanitarian intervention. Obviously the Libyan aggression is complex and can’t be boiled down to just one set of reasons; I do think that strategic interests and resources however do play a role in any type of military intervention. Who said this was a Western conspiracy? Are you talking to me here, anyway? I don’t know, haha. The rest of this paragraph you seem to be talking to yourself – you talk about Russia abstaining from the vote in exchange for existing oil contracts to be respected and then that the new government will look to Western powers in future oil deals – but this Western aggression has nothing to do with oil, no sir, nada.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8736496/Libya-the-minister-the-Tory-donor-and-a-contract-to-supply-oil.html

Anyway, I have to disagree on the whole regional stability model. Like the U.S. and the other cohorts give two shits about regional stability in the Congo for instance. Or even in the Middle East, say in Yemen when crimes and mass murder committed by government forces against unarmed protestors greatly exceeded any Gaddafi action at similar junctures, or in Bahrain. During the lead-up to our aggression you kept hearing about Gaddafi’s regime committed mass rapes, using foreign mercenaries and employing helicopters against civilians though later Amnesty and HRW found no evidence for these crimes. Stable for who exactly, leaders, elites and politicians right? Where’s the stability for those living in nations supplied by U.S. arms, you tend to not hear as much in the press about U.S. arms being used to suppress the revolt by the Houthi Shiite population in the north of Yemen and the southern secessionist movement that has been trying to overthrow his government for a number of years.

‘Seventy per cent of the capital’s homes have no running water… Large parts of the city have little or no electricity. Fresh produce, milk and cooking gas are all but unattainable...

‘Hospitals are running out of oxygen, fixators for treating fractures, and drugs for conditions such as diabetes… The city is filled with the stench of rubbish, and occasional corpses, rotting in the heat. Telephones work only intermittently. Most commercial life ceased months ago. Many people have no money left because the banks are shut and salaries have not been paid.’

I’ve seen that wikileaks quote a lot, usually presented as evidence that we intervened simply because the contracts weren’t sweet enough. I don’t think this is the case. As you said the situation is more complex.

The US doesn’t care about stability in the Congo because we get our coltan regardless of how fucked up things are. Chaos in Libya on the other hand prevents us from accessing its oil and sends boatloads of refugees to Malta. We have a strategic interest in a friendly stable Libya.

After Gaddafi began massacring his own people there were three possible outcomes. First, Gaddafi could successfully crush the uprising - Libya would stabilize to a certain extent, but since a majority of Libyans, (especially in the east) rejected his authority, the situation would likely be messy for a while and sooner or later there’d be another revolution. Most importantly, due to public opinion we’d have to sanction him (at least for a while) and all the development contracts would go to China and Russia. Second, the conflict could end in a stalemate with the country partitioned. That’s not a particularly stable situation and hardly good for exporting oil. Third, the rebels could win and we’d have a new government to deal with. If we helped the rebels win, we could ensure they’d look favorably upon our energy companies.

Of all these situations, the third is the best for regional stability, the best for oil companies, and crazy enough, the best for the Libyan people.

I think it’s short sighted to focus on the selfish intentions of intervention.

Yemen and Syria are completely different cases. Even if we wanted to (which we don’t necessarily) we couldn’t overthrow those regimes with airpower alone.

There has yet to be solid evidence of mass rape. The use of foreign mercenaries from the Sahel has been documented. I think the rebels (and the often enough the generally pro-rebel media) greatly overstated the number of mercenaries because they didn’t want to admit that significant numbers of Libyans were willing to die for Gaddafi. The helicopter claim was also discovered to be unfounded. I don’t see these stories as evidence of a conspiracy. We’re not talking about something on the level of Nigerian yellow cake or the dodgy dossier.

Bahrain and Yemen were not more bloody than Libya at the time we intervened (mid-March). The first deaths in Yemen were when 50 some were killed in Sanaa when snipers shot at people on the square. The total number of deaths in Bahrain to date is under 50. On the other hand, the chief prosecutor of the ICC estimated that 500-700 protesters were killed by Gaddafi’s forces in February alone.

In Yemen I don’t think there’s a coherent opposition to support. You have the student leaders, the traditional opposition parties (Islamic and leftist, both tainted by their past cooperation with the regime) and the tribes. None of these groups have the same vision for a post-Saleh Yemen. It’s a far messier situation than Libya. Intervention would be impossible.

firefly wrote:

Plum Puddin' wrote:

MCGF wrote:

Plum Puddin' wrote: The US-NATO intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular and by so doing to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity and trying to restore the status quo ante.

This actually makes no sense.

I think he's trying to say that it is no longer a rebellion of the people now the west is involved. How likely is it the CIA and NATO wont put in their selected leaders in place of Mo?

I think it's more along the lines of there never really was a real rebellion to begin with, that is the CIA was behind the whole thing.

Frankly, this sort of thinking strikes me as quite patronizing, as if the Libyans don’t know what’s going on. They rose up on their own. They took over half the country on their own. They got pushed back by a superior military and they asked for outside help. With assistance from the air and a handful of advisors on the ground, they held their ground and eventually captured the rest of Libya. And all the left can see is the dark hand of the CIA and NATO? This obsession with our involvement denies the agency of the Libyans themselves – as if they are simply ignorant little pawns in our game.

Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:53 pm

Dr Sagacious

Joined: 01 Mar 2009
Posts: 1842
Location: Redford

How much money do you think the CIA has, Firefly? To fund an entire faux-rebellion comprised of a ballpark estimate of hundreds of thousands of Libyans? That's a shitlod of money, homie. That would leave no money in the budget for all the other dasterdly things you accuse them of doing every other day. ;-)

"WHAT YOU FUCKING FAGGOT BITCHES KNOW ABOUT THE LIBYAN WAR IS ALL FUCKING MYTHOLOGY, NIGGA! STOP READING THAT BULLSHIT THEY FEED YOU, AND GO OUT ON THE STREETS OF TRIPOLI, LIKE I DO, NIGGA! GET THE STORY FOR YOURSELF, FAGGOT FUCKING FAGGOTS!"

Joined: 07 Aug 2003
Posts: 5457
Location: the chocolate city with a marshmallow center and a graham cracker crust of corruption

funny thing is, most of the condemnations of the intervention i've seen are coming from people with no expertise in the region. they mostly come from a leftist perspective and tend to oppose whatever the US and western governments support.

when i read egyptian, lebanese, and turkish papers, or writings by academics or journalists who focus on MENA, i get a much different much set of opinions. to be sure, there's plenty of cynicism and criticism of NATO's role, but i'm not seeing anyone say "hey you know gaddafi's not such a bad guy."

even al-akhbar, the lebanese paper that tends to line up with the pro-hezbollah pro-left "resistance axis" has good things to say about the rebel leaders.

It's funny coz immortal technique is seen as crazy in hip hops. And we're on a hip hop forum so it all relates.

Thats genius man.

Was that 'joke' just a chance for you to say those words?

Did it make you feel bad ass?

Did it make you feel Von Awesome?

Not trying to be a dick, and not a 100% sure where I personally stand on the "Libya intervention". But, CounterPunch isn't the most reputable source to link to for this kind of thing. They're kind of like a left wing version of Fox news, not really concerned with accuracy, but pretty fucking good at the whole entertainment thing.